


you carry my heart

by pipistrelle



Series: there is a season [15]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Battle Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war and the journey home, Rosethorn dreams about returning from a dark and secret place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you carry my heart

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting around in my drafts for ages and ages. It was originally written in response to a prompt from sitonyourhands on tumblr, who wanted to see Rosethorn and her struggle to leave the Temple of the Sealed Eye. As it turns out, this was as close as I could come to writing that.
> 
> SPOILERS for Battle Magic.

Rosethorn had gone to bed immediately after the midnight service. She and Evvy had weeded the entire garden that afternoon, even enlisting Lark and Comas to help in order to finish before supper, and the work had tired her.

Lark was not at all tired. She knew going to her bed would only leave her tossing and turning, chasing restful sleep. Rosethorn's heartbeat and soft breathing might have lulled her, but she wouldn't have disturbed Rosethorn's rest for all the silk in Yanjing. Instead she brought a lamp-stone into her workroom, where a blanket woven with signs of protection waited half-finished on her loom.

The motions of weaving, thoughtless to her as breathing, calmed her restlessness at once. She fell easily into the drift of magic, the pull of the patterns made by threads that interwove, going and returning, each giving its whole being to become a part of something greater, stronger. Without noticing, she began to hum as she worked. It was a soft, solemn, wistful tune, one she had learned from a soft, solemn Trader girl around a campfire on the edge of the desert, in Chammur, in another life.

She had no idea how long she had been working when a soft sound, not part of the pattern of her weaving or the pattern of the song, drew her attention. She let the loom go still with a sigh and turned, expecting to see Glaki, who often slept badly and came to the soothing sound of the loom. (Evvy had nightmares, too, but in two months she had never yet come to Lark looking for comfort. For her part, Lark, who had lived with Rosethorn for twenty years, knew better than to push her.)

It wasn't Glaki in the doorway. It was Rosethorn, wearing only a cotton shift, her eyes heavy with sleep and her hair mussed without regard to vanity. She looked puzzled and distant, staring at Lark as though she had forgotten who she was.

It was that look that stilled Lark's fingers and brought her heart up into her throat. "Rosie?"

"You were singing," Rosethorn said slowly, thoughtfully, as though it were a matter of deep mystery.

"Did I wake you?"

"No -- I had a dream. At least, I think it was a dream." Rosethorn kneaded her forehead with the knuckles of one hand, just above the crease etched between her eyes by a lifetime of scowling. "I can't seem to remember. Blight and beetles -- as if the pain in my knees weren't bad enough, now my memory's full of holes. This growing-old business will drive me mad."

Lark smiled. That sounded more like her Rosethorn. "Mad, maybe, but no less lovely."

Rosethorn's lips quirked, but she didn't quite smile. She was wearing that distracted, inward gaze again, as though searching the depths of her mind for something that she hadn't had to remember in years.

It wasn't the worn, harried look she wore after nightmares, or the heartsick terror that meant she had tripped over a memory and found herself transported back to Gyongxe, to the blood and smoke. Lark was intimately familiar by now with the scars that war had left on Rosethorn's mind, and this didn't look like any of them. Softly, her fingers absolutely still on her shuttle, she asked, "Do you want to tell me about it? Your dream?"

Rosethorn hesitated for a long time -- so long that Lark was sure she would refuse, as she had refused so many times before, preferring to stay locked in her own silence and pain rather than burden Lark with a precise description of the horrors she'd endured.

But she did not refuse. Instead she came and sat on the bench that ran along the large table in the center of the room, resting her chin in her hands. "It was mostly nonsense," she said slowly. "Lions made of ice. Snake skeletons."

"Evvy once told me she dreams about snakes made of bone."

Rosethorn shrugged. "Briar does, too. Green Man take me if I know why. I've dreamed of them before, but this time was different. You were there."

Lark drew in a breath. She knew she featured in Rosethorn's worst dreams. She would have known just from the way Rosethorn cried out for her in her sleep, but Rosethorn had told her about one of those nightmares. Only once; Lark had tried to keep her horror from showing on her face, but it had been enough to ensure Rosethorn's silence.

Now, though, she didn't seem troubled, only distracted. "You were close by -- I could hear you. Your loom. And you were singing."

Lark waited.

"I was in a dark place, and cold, but I wasn't frightened. In fact, I wanted to stay there, more than I've wanted anything in -- in a long time. There were secrets to be had there, hidden things. Treasures." Rosethorn stopped, frowning, as though she was surprised at her own use of the word. Lark was, too; treasure of any kind was rarely a thing Rosethorn put stock in.

She paused for so long that Lark began to think she wouldn't continue. Finally she prompted, "Treasures?"

Rosethorn nodded. "If I stayed there, I would never have seen you again. You or the children, or sunlight, or any green thing. I knew that." Her soft brown eyes met Lark's. "I knew that, and I nearly stayed anyway. But I could hear you singing."

Rosethorn's tone was blunt and straightforward, as though she were describing a day spent weeding in her own garden. As though it were a perfectly obvious, ordinary thing, for Lark's voice to have led her out of a dark place.

"I followed it," Rosethorn went on. "I followed you back. When I heard you just now, I thought -- I knew that I needed to follow it. To find you. I don't think I woke up until you said my name. Anyway," she added hastily, "it was only a dream."

Despite her words, tension showed in the set of Rosethorn's shoulders and the faint creases around the corners of her mouth. "Only a dream," Lark agreed. She let her hand rest lightly on Rosethorn's, reassuring. "But not a bad one?"

Rosethorn hesitated, then let herself relax. "No."

"That alone is a blessing."

"I suppose so." Rosethorn stood and covered a yawn. The warm, steady light from the lamp-stone threw a deep auburn gloss on her hair. In its glow she looked younger, stronger, almost as she had before she had set out on the road to Yanjing. "Listen to me, nattering on while you're trying to work."

Lark shrugged and set her shuttle aside. "It can wait for tomorrow."

"Come to bed, then?" Rosethorn smiled crookedly down at Lark. "You can keep me from any more wandering. That girl runs me ragged enough during the day, making me chase after her. It would be nice if I could at least get to be still while I'm asleep."

Lark stood and kissed Rosethorn softly. "In a moment. Just let me clean up here."

Rosethorn nodded and left. Lark lingered in her workroom, straightening the spools of thread stacked on the shelves. When everything was arranged to her satisfaction, she drew a counterclockwise spiral on the lamp-stone with one finger, extinguishing its light, and shut the workroom door behind her.

Before Rosethorn's journey to Gyongxe, she and Lark had spent most of their nights together in Lark's bed, which was larger and softer than Rosethorn's. Since her return, Rosethorn had complained that it was too soft, after sleeping on the ground and in berths on various ships for years. Now, when they slept together, it was in Rosethorn's room. Lark didn't mind sacrificing the comfort of her mattress for the much greater comfort of Rosethorn's arm draped over her waist and Rosethorn's faint, buzzing snore in her ear.

She stole across the hall to find Rosethorn waiting for her, in bed but not yet asleep. Lark quickly settled beside her, curling the blanket around both of them with a twitch of her fingers. "Good night," Rosethorn murmured at her back.

"Good night, love," Lark answered. "Sweet dreams."


End file.
